TOTAL WAR WIKI

Arc de Triomphe (ETW building)

This is a magnificent and imposing monument to French military prowess and success.

All armies and nations need to mark their victories and honour their dead. The Arc de Triomphe was the largest structure of its type ever designed, and was intended to be a grandiloquent gesture of French military superiority. This, given that Napoleon Bonaparte had direction of the French army, was entirely reasonable.

Created to mark Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz in 1805, the structure was commissioned a year later, but not completed until the 1830s. Napoleon ordered a wooden mock-up to be put in place in 1810, and work was completely halted after the Bourbon restoration. Napoleon’s corpse eventually passed through the arch on its way to its final resting place at Les Invalides. This was not the only remarkable thing to pass through the arch: at the victory parade to mark the end of the First World War, a pilot flew his Nieuport biplane under the arch as part of the event! The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is a later addition, commemorating the honoured dead and missing of the French army in the Great War.